Day care owner Jessica Tata charged with 4 counts of murder

Tata, 24, is on trial, charged with felony murder. Prosecutors said she left several children home alone with a pot of grease heating on a stove while she went shopping in 2011. When she got home, the house was on fire, officials said.

Arson investigator Anita Delgadillo told the jury about several items that were found after the fire, including a dry erase board with the day care's schedule and a paper schedule that was found on a refrigerator in the kitchen.

Delgadillo told the jury that a smoke detector in the master bedroom of the home had batteries missing from it. Two other smoke detectors in the home were hardwired into the home's electricity system. None of the firefighters and neighbors who previously testified remembered hearing any of the smoke detectors going off.

The jury also heard about a Target bag that was found about 7 feet from the front door. A receipt inside the bag was time-stamped 1:18 p.m. and shows that Tata spent $9.03 on Gatorade and Minute Maid Berry Punch. Also in the bag was an empty Starbucks glass with a straw. Surveillance video previously shown during the trial showed Tata lingering near the Starbucks but did not show her being served.

Arson investigator Joe Pradier said he and his partner tried to interview Tata several hours after she arrived at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Katy. Pradier said Tata told them that she didn't remember anything, her heart was racing, she was in shock and she didn't know why she was in the hospital. She said she didn't want to be there, Pradier said.

Nurse Deborah Joyce told jurors that Tata was not in shock and showed no signs of injury other than a scratch on her left thumb. Joyce said Tata never appeared to be confused or disoriented around her and that before investigators arrived Tata was talking and laughing with her sisters while they watched television.

Senior Capt. David Swanson led the three-man search team that went into the burning home. He told the jury Tuesday that he and his crew crawled on hands and knees and were unable to see through the thick smoke. They used a thermal camera to search for the children. He said that one of the men found a baby laying under a card table near the kitchen, but the rest of the men didn't know because of the poor visibility.

Swanson said he and firefighter Jonathan Robinson bumped into cribs in a back bedroom. That's where they found two children.

A neighbor told jurors Monday that Tata tried to save children who were inside her burning home day care.

Christian Wendeberg, who lived near the burning home, testified that he saw Tata dash into the house to rescue the children. He said she came out with two children, one of whom was unconscious. Both had suffered burns, he said.

Wendeberg shot cellphone video of the fire, too. He asked Tata how many children were inside the home when the fire started. She told him there were nine children in the home, Wendeberg said.

After seven children were pulled from the home, firefighters continued to search for two more children.

"We were told there were between seven and nine, so we were told to keep looking," firefighter Luis Carmona said.

Investigators said there were only seven children in the home and two of them were found in the back yard.

A second neighbor, Sandra Sawyer, also told a jury Monday that Tata told her that nine children were inside the home. Sawyer said she went through Tata's cellphone and read out the names of the children and their parents. That's when Tata realized that only seven children were there, Sawyer said.

Sawyer said she tried to assure Tata that the children would be OK, but Tata told her that the fire had been going on "a long time." Sawyer said Tata told her that she had been in the bathroom when the fire started and she passed out from the smoke.

Sawyer testified that she saw several of the children being carried out of the home by firefighters. Those children were covered in soot. Sawyer said she noticed that Tata did not have any soot on her clothing and she didn't smell like smoke.

Sawyer said she told Tata to call her mother, but Tata didn't want to do that.

"'Oh my God -- don't tell my mom,'" Sawyer said Tata told her. "'She's going to kill me. She didn't want me to have this day care in the first place.'"

Neighbor Michael McAndrews said Tata told him something odd while firefighters were battling the blaze and trying to rescue the children.

Another neighbor, Cynthia Poursartip, said that Tata admitted to her that she wasn't home when the fire stated. When she asked why, Poursartip said Tata told her, "I will tell them that when I testify."

Firefighter Billy Harris told the jury that Tata also told him that she was in the house when the fire started. He said he asked Tata why her clothes were so clean. He said Tata told him that she tried to lead the kids out of the fire but they kept running in circles.

"I told her there was no way she could have been inside," Harris testified.

Harris said Tata did not have a response to that statement.

Tata did make a call to 911 when she saw the fire, officials said.

"They're dying. I can't see anything. I can't even go in there and get them," Tata told the 911 operator. "The kids are dying."

Four minutes before the fire started, security cameras caught Tata shopping at a nearby Target store. The video was shown to jurors.

Tata has been charged with four counts of murder, three counts of abandoning a child and two counts of reckless injury to a child.

Prosecutors said Tata put the children in harm's way by leaving them alone and going shopping. While she was at Target, a fire broke out in the kitchen when oil in a frying pan on a stovetop burner ignited. Three children were also seriously injured in the blaze.

Tata's attorneys said she didn't intend to hurt the children. Defense attorneys said murder charges are excessive and that when the fire broke out, she tried to save the children, who ranged in age from 16 months to 3 years old.

After the fire, Tata fled to Nigeria but was captured after about a month, returned to the U.S. in March 2011 and has remained jailed. She was born in the U.S. but has Nigerian citizenship.

Shomari Dickerson, 3, Elizabeth Kojah, 20 months, Kendyll Stradford, 20 months, and Elias Castillo, 16 months, died in the fire at Jackie's Child Care on Crest Park at Waypark Drive shortly before 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 24, 2011. Three other children were injured. Tata is standing trial for felony murder first for the youngest of the victims -- Elias Castillo.